The Other Side
by the-last-garrison
Summary: The other side of our world can be a scary one. People fight, people get hurt, people die. Nothing can change that, not even the Lyoko Warriors. The only thing that changes is the side you fight for. "This world is dark," she reminded them. "Beware of its terrors." [T for violence, language and dark themes.]
1. Wow! Signal

Sunlight was shining through the window.

Sometimes, it was the only thing that reminded Jeremie that he was alive, and not an external entity of the computer.

He had fallen asleep at his desk again, drooling into the grooves of his keyboard—his neck did not take kindly to the position in which he had been hunched over.

" _Pee, and then shower,"_ he told himself, tasting the raw stench in his mouth.

A soft voice chirped his name, causing him to snap his neck upwards.

"Ow!" He whined, clutching the side of his tneck and rubbing it.

The voice laughed, and he instantly remembered his monitor.

"Are you alright, Jeremie?" Asked Aelita, her digital features sympathetic and kind.

"Fine…. I'm just in a bit of pain," Jeremie confirmed, a small smile touching the corners of his mouth.

As Aelita wasn't familiar with the sensation of touch, she intended to ask about what it felt like, although it didn't seem very pleasant. What interrupted them was the loud rapping on the door, before two familiar figures burst through the entrance.

"WAKE UP, EINSTEIN!"

A flash of purple sprinted to the bed and began jumping on it…with his shoes on. A grey bolt trailed behind him and began to rub it's shedding head on the carpet furiously.

Ulrich, who was the more reasonable one, leaned up against the door frame and asked what was up. "It's almost noon Jeremie, what's the deal? You've really been spending a lot of time on the computer lately—more so than usual."

"Well, I, uh…"

"It's okay Ulrich," smiled Aelita from the screen. "Jeremie has just been keeping me company. For the past few days, we've been working to locate something strange on Lyoko."

"Something strange?" Ulrich asked, leaning over the back of Jeremie's computer chair.

"Yes, well, a few days ago, I mentioned to Jeremie that I had felt a sort of presence in the Forest Sector for a few seconds…but haven't been able to feel it since," Aelita explained.

"Presence? What do you mean? Like XANA's pulsations?" Asked Ulrich. Even Odd had stopped moving and grooving for a few seconds to take a listen to the conversation. "Should we gear up to go to Lyoko?"

"Not quite," explained Jeremie, pulling up an additional window on his computer screen. The window contained a sequence of binary code in zeros and ones, randomly going on forever.

Odd shook his head.

"Jeremie, you want to tell me what we're supposed to be looking at here?"

Zooming in on a section of the window, Jeremie highlighted a sequence of characters that were unlike the rest.

 **6EQUJ5 6 7**

" _That_ is what you're looking at, Odd."

"Uhhh…" The two nearly drooled in unison.

"Okay so…what is it?"

Jeremie swiveled around in his chair to face his friends, crossing his arms on his chest.

" _That_ , Odd, is the sequence that the computer encodes when someone enters Lyoko through dematerialization in our world, and materialization into the digital world."

"So? We go to Lyoko all the time. It was probably one of us." Shrugged Odd, who didn't seem too concerned with the nonsense Jeremie was spewing.

Something donned on Ulrich, who was picking up exactly what Jeremie was putting down. "…Jeremie, when was this?"

"Three days ago."

None of the Lyoko Warriors had gone to Lyoko for a week, as XANA had been strangely quiet as of late.

"Three days?! And you kept this from us!" Ulrich was almost furious with his friend. "Why didn't you say something?! What if Aelita was in danger?"

Aelita interjected softly.

"Um, well, we weren't sure at first, Ulrich. Sometimes computers have glitches, you know? Starting a man hunt for a hump in binary data would have been a waste of resources and time. But now…now we're certain that someone…or some _thing_ had materialized into the Forest Sector of Lyoko, if only just for a little bit."

"How long was it there for?" Asked Ulrich.

"By my calculations," said Jeremie. "About seventy two seconds."

"Wow! Someone was able to materialize into Lyoko from the outside for that long?" Odd was officially interested.

"Yes, but my primary concern is how it was done. The only way into and out of Lyoko that we know of is through the supercomputer in the factory. So this means—"

"This means that there is another way into Lyoko, and someone has found it." Ulrich confirmed grimly. "And if this person or people found it, then so can XANA. What do we do now?"

"It's going to take me some time, but I might be able to deconstruct the data sequence and locate its IP address, effectively giving us the real-world location of where this someone or something materialized from," explained Jeremie. There was hope in his voice, but the confidence wavered.

"We should tell Yumi," suggested Ulrich.

Odd shook his head. "Sorry Ulrich, but that'll have to wait." He grinned. "She's busy."

Ulrich and Jeremie gave Odd a questioning look.

Kiwi grumbled.

* * *

Yumi stood in the warmth of the courtyard, her black hair teased by a soft breeze. She was there with two others, of whom the group had never encountered before.

One was a tall boy with curly dark hair and deep brown eyes. He wore brand name jeans and a well-tailored high neck sweater that was stylish, yet somewhat inappropriate for this kind of weather. He was telling a joke that made Yumi laugh, his hands lax in his pockets. The sun gleamed off a time piece secured to his wrist.

He seemed friendly—maybe a little bit too friendly for Ulrich's liking.

The girl next to him seemed considerably less friendly.

She was short, and she looked rather impatient and uptight with her arms crossed over herself, leaning precariously on her left leg. Her white blonde hair sat gracefully and well groomed in two loosely done braids. She wore a pair of long fashionable pants that were breezy and tied at the waist, and a black shirt that was much too short and much too tight.

Unlike her companion, who was focused entirely on a conversation with Yumi, the girl was looking around the courtyard—she was looking at people's faces.

"Who do you think they are?" Ulrich asked, a hint of jealously in his voice. He didn't take too kindly to this well-dressed stranger talking to Yumi…or his smug looking companion. But mostly the well-dressed stranger wearing the beige turtle neck in spring.

"I don't know," said Jeremie, taking a sip of his beverage. "Maybe they're new here."

"Yeah, maybe." Ulrich grumbled, walking towards the three figures in the courtyard. "But who is ever _new here_ in the middle of the spring semester?"

Jeremie and Odd looked at each other, shrugging unanimously before following his lead.

"Hey Yumi!" Called Odd across the way, "Yumi!" He thought it best to try and start off cheerfully before Ulrich could cause a commotion.

Yumi looked over and waved familiarly, cutting off the conversation with the well-dressed stranger. He looked down at his white-blonde companion, who met his gaze.

"Hey guys! Come here, I want you all to meet—"

Before Yumi could introduce the people she was with, the well-dressed stranger stepped forward and took the liberty of doing his own and his companion's introductions.

He smiled warmly and greeted the interlopers.

"Hello," he said, his voice warm and inviting. "My name is Zed. And this is my sister, Mary Anne. We just moved to the area. Yumi here was doing us the kindness of showing us around the school grounds."

Mary Anne made no attempt at friendly gestures, and only nodded her head at the group ever so slightly in greeting. Her face remained stern.

"You seem kind of old to be attending Kadic, don't you think?" Ulrich questioned.

Yumi was about to protest at how rude Ulrich was being, but didn't have to. Zed smiled a charming smile at him.

"Yes, well, I will be attending Lycée Lakanal, the high school across the way. It's my sister Mary Anne who will be attending the junior high school with you, in year eight." Zed put one hand on Mary Anne's shoulder, and she simply held her bag tighter to herself. The word _Herm_ _è_ _s_ glistened in silver lettering.

"That's great," stated Odd before Ulrich could bite a chunk out of this guy's jugular. "Really great. But if you don't mind, we need to borrow Yumi for the rest of the afternoon—important friend business is all…you know…because we're friends."

One yank of the arm from Odd and Ulrich, and Yumi was waving goodbye to Zed and his sister Mary Anne.

The two of them watched intently as Yumi was taken away. Mary Anne was doing it again—she was leaning precariously on her left leg and watching the faces of the group. Zed smiled politely, as he had been doing the entire time. Once out of earshot, a stream of questions from every which way poured in toward Yumi.

"Who were they?"

"Why are they here?"

"Why were you showing them around?"

"Hey did you notice how that girl Mary Anne leaned too much to the left?"

"Yeah, and I think pretty boy Zed was constantly turning towards his right side, did you notice that?"

Yumi protested. "Guys! What is up with you?! They're just new students, and Principal Delmas asked me to help show Mary Anne around. Her brother just came with her. It's really not as big of a deal as it should be."

Of course it wasn't.

And after a few snide remarks about how cozy Yumi looked with Zed leaning in so closely, and Ulrich having given him a good smack behind the ear, it really wasn't a big deal anymore.

"Listen, we have a problem," Jeremie reminded everyone. "It's Lyoko."

"Oh no, is it XANA again?" She asked.

The boys looked at each other, each of them waiting for someone else to say something.

"…What?" Yumi's features went pale.

Jeremie came forward and described, what was now being referred to as, the breech on Lyoko.

"…Oh."

Across the yard, Zed and Mary Anne watched the group of friends intently.

"Do you think it's them?" Zed asked under his breath, no longer smiling his warm and inviting smile.

Mary Anne nearly rolled her eyes at her brother. "I _know_ it's them. The calculations were precise—we must have checked the numbers a dozen times. Someone is materializing into Lyoko from this garbage dump of a learning institution, and I bet anything that it's these people."

From her purse that she held onto so well, Mary Anne took out a small note pad, and began to rattle off their names one by one.

Yumi Ishiyama.

Ulrich Stern.

Odd Della Robia.

Jeremie Belpois.

"That means they've uncovered the supercomputer."

"Mhm," agreed Mary Anne, nodding her head as she tossed the notepad back into her handbag. "Not that that oaf Hopper hid it very well."

"Don't speak ill of oafs, Mary Anne. Oafs are the highly misunderstood creatures of history…. The data we pulled and synthesized from the system suggested three visitors, and one person to control the materialization process. That makes four," confirmed Zed.

Mary Anne sneered.

"And I count four little bugs, just ripe for the squashing."

"What was the other presence we detected?" He reminded her. "The bound one."

Mary Anne sighed, watching as the group of friends fled from the siblings' sight. "Either one of their own got stuck there…or it's Hopper's doing."

"If she survived on Lyoko all this time, then don't you think that we should, for the time being, take a step back and see what this group can do? They could prove beneficial to us."

"What are you saying?" Questioned Mary Anne, raising one of her finely plucked eyebrows.

Zed leaned against a nearby bench, shrugging his shoulders.

"I'm _saying_ that we only have so many limbs, sister. Better them than us."

Mary Anne was not happy with this suggestion.

"Dearest brother," she started. "Lyoko begins with us, and it will end with us. Never forget that."

The white-blonde haired girl walked off back towards the buildings containing principal's office, going to collect her paperwork so she could begin classes as soon as possible.

Zed sighed, fidgeting with the brown colored contact in one of his eyes. "I have a bad feeling about this."


	2. Materialization

**I just want to thank anyone who is taking the time to read this story. I intend for it to be quite dark, so if at all I feel the need to change the age rating, then I will inform all readers beforehand.**

* * *

By the weekend, Jeremie had been able to fixate on the exact location of the mysterious materialization in the Lyoko Forest Sector.

"The plan is to materialize into Lyoko and try and find some kind of 'backdoor' in the area—any way in which someone or something not already apart of Lyoko could have gotten in or out. If anyone would be able to find it, it'd be Aelita. The rest of you will guard her against any attacks during that time. Understood?"

Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi all confirmed with Jeremie on the plan one more time, already having been materialized into Lyoko, and their vehicles right behind them.

They met Aelita in a different part of the Forest Sector and planned to travel to the location of the materialization signal to avoid a possible ambush.

Aelita rode with Yumi, and guided the way for the digitized friends to find the point of materialization.

"What do you think we'll find?" Asked Odd, balancing expertly on his hover board as they all raced through the unusually quite Forest Sector.

"I don't know," admitted Aelita, whose arms were wrapped around Yumi's waist as she steered. "I've never encountered something like this before."

"None of us have," said Yumi, veering to the left in order to move out of the way of a fallen tree.

Had that tree always been like that?

" _Of course it's always been like that,"_ Yumi scolded herself. _"This is a virtual reality, nothing changes unless it's programmed to change."_

"Well, whatever it is," interjected Ulrich. "Everything will be okay, we promise Aelita. We would never let anything happen to you, no matter what."

The farther the group traveled, the more changes to the landscape they noticed.

Trees had been toppled over, the ground began to crack and shift, and even the shape of the landscape itself has been effected—where there was once ground to stand on, there was none any longer.

"Jeremie, are you getting this?" Asked Ulrich.

In reality, Jeremie was carefully documenting every inch of change of the playing field.

"Yes, I'm reading it loud and clear. I don't understand," he said to himself, although everyone could hear. "In order for the landscape to change so significantly, someone would have had to…—"

"Someone would have had to reprogram Lyoko!" Exclaimed Yumi, before coming to a screeching halt. It wasn't the realization that stopped her.

It was the army of XANA's monsters blocking their passage.

"Where did these ugly motherfuckers come from?!" Shouted Odd before taking a tumble off his hover board—he expertly landed on his feet after a quick somersault to absorb the shock of the impact, and shot a laser arrow into the eye of a Blok as it whizzed and whirled in anger, destroying it.

Ulrich dismounted his vehicle and drew his sword, immediately stepping in front of the girls to block attacks launched by the monsters.

A flash of blue caught his leg, and he was down ten life points already.

Never before had the Lyoko Warriors ever seen such a force gathered all together. Bloks, Kankrelats, Hornets, Krabs, even Megatanks—gathered all together in such numbers, that some of them had begun to spill over the edge of the Forest and fall into the void of cyberspace below.

Yumi and Aelita were the last to get down, the most hesitant in battle because if anything happened to Aelita, then it was game over. Yumi defensively gears up for a fight and ordered Aelita to stay behind her.

"They just keep multiplying!" Grunted Ulrich as he and Odd mounted an attack on a Megatank. Odd took down the Megatank with a laser arrow, and then launched Ulrich towards a Hornet that he had sliced in half, destroying it.

"Jeremie, what's going on?! Make this stop!" Cried out Odd, who had taken a hit to the shoulder.

Twenty life points down.

The boys were hurting, and fast.

Jeremie typed furiously away on the supercomputer's keyboard, attempting to find a backdoor of escape for his friends.

"I don't know!" He cried out, gritting his teeth. "Hang on tight you guys, there has to be some way out of…."

"Jeremie?! Jeremie, answer us! We can't hold out much longer!" Ulrich shouted, surrounded by an envelope of Hornets and Krabs. He slashed at the Krabs' legs as Yumi used her fans to cut down the Hornets in the sky.

He couldn't answer them, as he was watching something impossible.

At the back of the army, a bright light began to materialize.

The white illumination cut through the virtual reality so starkly, it was as if the whole world paused—and that's because it did. This light enveloped the space in which there was matter, and suddenly there was no matter there, effectively bending the shape of Lyoko around it.

Jeremie thought quickly, and opened a new window on one of his screens that displayed the binary data of Lyoko during the events that took place in real time on the plane. He scanned it furiously for the sequence, going through what must have beene thousands of bits of data in order to find it.

And there it was.

Right in front of his eyes.

 **6EQUJ5 6 7**

Turning back to the screen which displayed the physical events in Lyoko, he was stunned, as were his friends.

From the light stepped a figure, materializing itself onto their plane.

Adorned in full-body armor of obsidian and accented in a violent violet, the figure—the person—was covered from head to toe in what seemed to be an indestructible shield. The helmet left only the eyes on display—a pair of heart stoppers. From the neck down, the armor shifted and conformed to the movements of the figure, except for the breast plate, which was a peaked shield that met at the midline. The right leg was draped almost elegantly in black cloth from the hip down—the only part of the being that was not shielded in armor.

The most extraordinary thing happened then.

As the figure broke free from the light and began to sprint, its legs started to dematerialize, and at the same time, new ones materialized in their place, only this time, there were four instead of two.

They had taken the body form of a centaur made of machines.

Getting faster and faster, the Lyoko Warriors watched, unmoved with suspense, as the figure that had materialized before their eyes was charging towards the army of Monsters.

"Stop! Stop! You'll kill yourself!" A voice finally yelled among them. No one knew for certain who it was. Ulrich maybe thought it was himself who was yelling, but he was so removed from himself with shock that he couldn't have been entirely sure.

The figure ignored the cries, and instead, reached out their hands at arm's length, bringing them together in an echoing clap that was so powerful, the earth shook. As the hands pulled away from each other—moving farther and farther apart—from the empty space between them materialized a razor-edged lance made of the same obsidian material that their armor was made of.

Charging forward, the figure mounted the lance to their side, like a knight charging into battle. With might, the knight cut down the outer ranks of the hoard of Monsters, fighting with ease towards the center of the mass.

Anything that touched the lance burst into pixels, and then disappeared into the nothingness of cyberspace.

At the center of the hoard, the figure became surrounded on all sides by the Monsters.

The knight was undeterred.

Abandoning the joust, they cast aside their lance. Once it left their possession, the lance burst into pixels, much like a Monster being destroyed, and disappeared into nothing.

From another earth-moving clap of the hands, a fiery ball-and-chain weapon materialized. They began to swing it over their head slowly, and then quicker in pace and might. After enough momentum was built up, the long chain was let loose from their fingers, and in one circular rotation, every Monster on the plane surrounding the figure had been destroyed.

Pixels.

And then nothing.

Dozens—if not, hundreds of Monsters—gone.

The knight had slowed down and finally stopped moving at a fair distance from the group of beaten Lyoko Warriors.

Abandoning their weapon yet again, the ball and chain weapon vanished—dematerializing from the plane. The figure's four legs had vanished, only to revert to the standard two legs—one encased in armor and the other draped in cloth from the hip down.

Odd was the first to speak.

"Cool," he breathed.

No one else dared speak, their eyes about to spring from their skulls in astonishment.

The knight in shining obsidian armor stood at the safe distance at which it initially stopped and looked on at the group before them. They were looking at each of the group's faces, examining them.

Even Jeremie paused.

"Well…," he said out loud. "I guess we found our some _one_ …"

* * *

 **Please let me know what you think in a review! xoxo -L**


	3. Mary Anne

This person.

This literal _knight in shining armor_ was the something or some _one_ that had materialized on Lyoko. They were the manifestation of

 **6EQUJ5 6 7**

They had single-handedly just taken down a horde of XANA's Monsters, gathered together in a magnitude that had never been seen before.

And now here they stood, upright in all their victorious glory.

Menacing.

Staring down the Lyoko Warriors as if they were cowardly prey about to be pounced on.

Someone had to say something…right?

Those on Lyoko were hoping that Jeremie would have done it, but it didn't seem appropriate for the disembodied voice to do the introductions.

Someone nudged Odd forward—it could have been Ulrich, or Yumi…or even himself of his own curiosity—, giving him the nerve to go over and interact with the knight. He walked cautiously at first, but ultimately abandoned caution and approached the knight in a friendly manner.

"Hi, I—," he had hardly been able to get out a greeting when the knight lunged forward.

Gripping Odd's features in one hand, a white light shone from the knight's hand, and then Odd was gone.

Dematerialized.

Just like that.

Yumi and Ulrich immediately stood up in front of Aelita, drawing their weapons defensively. It did not appear that this knight was on their side anymore.

"Aelita, stay behind us. We don't know who or what this person is," Ulrich warned.

"Where's Odd?!" Questioned Yumi. "What did you do to him?"

The knight was unmoved, head slacked to one side. Their eyes were wide with something cold and unnerving.

"Oh…," spoke the knight. "So, you've found yourself a spine."

The voice with which they spoke was suspicious to say the least. It sounded like it had been tuned through a computer program. No emotion, no inflection and no way a human could have sounded like that.

"Where is Odd? We won't ask you again," gritted Yumi.

From above came a breath of air unlike any other. Jeremie's voice broke through the tension on Lyoko with some good news.

"Guys, Odd has just materialized back into our world! I repeat: Odd is here at the factory!"

If this person could eject them from Lyoko, then they didn't seem to be too friendly.

The knight, who was not interested in anything that the Lyoko Warriors had to say, tossed aside their questions. From the sides of their armor, they raised their hands slowly, and as they did so, a piercing ring began to cut through the sector.

While they were on Lyoko, nothing had ever hurt them before. This was simply because there was no pain on Lyoko, as there was no sense of touch.

But this was for sure something that the Lyoko Warriors could feel right down to their core.

Yumi and Ulrich became crippled where they stood, dropping their weapons and collapsing to their knees.

"W-What's happening?" Ulrich panicked.

The only one who did not seem to be affected was Aelita.

"Ae-Aeli-ita, g-go! F-f-find a tow-tower a…n-dd hide!" Yumi pleaded. She was struggling to get out her words now, and Ulrich could hardly make out words at all. It was like this knight was trying to put them on _pause_.

Aelita protested, unwilling to leave her friends in the face of adversity. "I can't just leave yo—"

"GO!" They roared at her in unison.

She heeded their advice and bolted for it in the opposite direction.

Jeremie furiously tried to find a solution to what was crippling his friends, scouring data bank after data bank for some kind of key to unlock them from what was happening to them, or even a way to take down the knight.

Odd had wandered off, and could be heard retching in the distance somewhere.

Once completely subdued, the knight approached Yumi and Ulrich. They gripped each of their faces in one armored hand each, just as they had done to Odd. But before dematerializing them, the knight had something to say in their strange, computerized voice.

"This world is dark," said the voice. "Beware of its terrors."

A white light appeared from their hands.

Yumi and Ulrich were dematerialized, no matter how hard Jeremie tried to counteract the dematerialization process. Nothing was responding to his actions.

"Dammit!" He seethed, gritting his teeth.

Back on Earth, Ulrich and Yumi materialized at the factory, and although they weren't sick like Odd, they were weak. Yumi complained of a dizziness that she had never experienced before, gripping onto the side of her pod. It was normal to feel fatigued after returning to Earth from Lyoko, but this kind of physical damage was something that had never happened before.

Ulrich dry heaved once before tripping over his own feet and falling out of the materialization pod. Yumi made a move to help him up, but he encouraged her to go see Jeremie instead.

Einstein was glued to his screen.

Yumi and Ulrich gathered around the supercomputer with Jeremie and watched the events that were unfolding.

It was the knight, and they were speaking directly to the Lyoko Warriors.

"This world is dark," they repeated. "Beware of its terrors. Return to Lyoko again, and I will do a lot more than kick you out."

And then they were gone, dematerialized on their own.

The computer screen went dark, and although they could not see Jeremie's face, his friends could make out the expression of his reflection. It was not a very pleasant one.

"…Who was that?" Odd pipped up, dragging himself away from the corner he was done retching in. He was green, but he was holding up. Something about forcibly being ejected from a virtual reality made him want to expel his lunch.

"You don't think that they're working for XANA, do you?" Asked Yumi. "I mean, how else would they be able to dematerialize us like that?"

"They showed more command of Lyoko than the five of us combined, and that's including Aelita who lives there," added Ulrich.

"I don't know…," mumbled Jeremie thoughtfully. "But I'm determined to find out. I'll get to work finding the IP address of their point of dematerialization. In the meantime, no one returns to Lyoko until we know that Aelita is safe and we know that we would be safe to go back."

"It's never safe going to Lyoko," said Ulrich. "We literally go there to fight evil."

Jeremie swung around in his chair to face Ulrich. "So what do you suggest I do, send you back when we don't even know who or what we are up against?"

"Yes!" The three of them erupted.

"We aren't leaving Aelita on Lyoko with that _thing_ ," Yumi affirmed. "Send us back. This way we can at least make sure she's okay."

Jeremie was hesitant, but he also wanted to make sure that Aelita had found a tower and gotten to safety. Sure, he could have reached out to her over the computer, but it would have made him breathe easier if their friends went in person to make sure she was alright. He finally agreed, starting up the system again and keying in the coordinates for Aelita's location in the Forest Sector.

Odd, Yumi and Ulrich did not return to Lyoko that day.

When preparing to virtualize themselves, something had locked Jeremie out of the dematerialization program.

And it was a fucking rabbit.

Jeremie was attempting to decrypt and deconstruct the firewall, but every time he thought he had the correct code to break through, a cartoonish brown rabbit popped up on his screen and stuck its tongue out at him, before closing out the entire window he was working in.

"What do you mean we can't get back to Lyoko?!" Odd was offended, because now he would have to go back to his dorm and do homework. They had all gathered back to the computer—even Aelita was present—safe and sound in one of the towers.

"Our new friend must have locked me out somehow. I can connect with Lyoko, which is why I can still talk to Aelita, but the binary coding for dematerialization has been scrambled and then scattered. The entire process of dematerialization is now offline," he explained.

"…in English?"

"The knight must have infected the supercomputer with some kind of virus, so now we can't get back onto Lyoko…which also means that rematerialization is out of the question. Aelita coming to Earth will have to be put on hold until I can figure out how to get us back online."

"Can you fix it?" Asked Yumi.

"I think so," said Jeremie, laying back in the chair. "But I'll need time. I've never seen something so complicated. I'm worried about Aelita."

"It's okay Jeremie," Aelita reassured. "I no longer detect any other presence on Lyoko. I should be safe as long as I stay in the tower."

The Lyoko Warriors went away from the factory that night feeling on-edge and defeated by this knight in shining armor. First, they had XANA to worry about, who wanted to cause chaos and hurt people, and now they had this knight to deal with, whose motives were unclear at this time, but they didn't seem to be very good.

" _This world is dark…. Beware of its terrors."_

Jeremie could hear the computerized drawl in his dreams that night.

He tossed and turned, never really getting any sleep knowing that somewhere, someone was trying to hurt him and his friends. Of course, there was XANA, but it's different when the knight is a physical person in the real world, and XANA is—for the most part—contained to cyberspace.

Dragging himself out of bed the next morning for class was brutal.

He had not been able to fall asleep since the sun broke over the horizon, and by then it was nearly time to get up for the day.

After falling asleep in the shower twice and ending up late to class, he had concluded that maybe just for today, he would not be on his A-Game in physics.

That, however, did not mean that he wasn't going to answer questions.

Apparently.

Ms. Hertz was going on and on at the front of the class, making intricate chalk drawings of what were supposed to be black holes. She wasn't a very good artist, so the lesson was complicated to follow.

"Now," she started. "Can anyone tell me why the term 'black hole' is actually not correct, so to speak?"

The class sat in silence, scratching their heads. From across the room, you could hear Sissi flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine. That was about as much that Ms. Hertz was going to get out of them.

Jeremie, although struggling to keep conscious, took pity on Ms. Hertz and her lesson, and opened his mouth to speak.

"Black holes are—"

That was about as much as he got out before a head of white-blonde hair and finely manicured fingers interrupted him.

"Black holes are not actually black," explained Mary Anne, her cheek rested in one hand. She looked bored, to say the least. "They appear so because they glow with heat radiation."

The class was quiet again, but it was a different kind of quiet. Even Ms. Hertz took a few seconds to figure out what had just happened, which was that someone answered a question about a complex scientific idea, and it was not Jeremie.

"Y-Yes…that is correct, Ms…," Ms. Hertz struggled to find a name for this student who had just popped a sphere of bubblegum at her lips.

"Mary Anne," said the bored white-blonde girl. "Just Mary Anne."

"Well, Mary Anne, thank you for that explanation," said Ms. Hertz. "Everyone should take a page out of Mary Anne's book and actually read the assigned reading, instead of just skimming it and underlining random sentences to make it look like you read it. Now…."

Ms. Hertz continued for the rest of the lesson, going in depth about the concept of Hawking Radiation. She periodically would turn around from her work on the black board to ask the class a question, but really, she was asking Mary Anne the question, of which she always got right.

Across the room, Mary Anne's eyes had at one point locked with Jeremie's before breaking away, as he took periodic incredulous glances over at the girl who was stealing his usual limelight.

Her eyes were…well…they were cold and…unnerving.

" _Why does that look seem so…familiar?_ "

By the end of class, Jeremie felt very unimportant. Odd and Ulrich had to console him with the gift of a hot chocolate from the beverage machine outside in the courtyard—and not just any hot chocolate—a deluxe hot chocolate with marshmallows. What made it even sweeter was that Odd paid for it, and Odd never pays for anything.

"Cheer up, Einstein," grinned Odd, patting Jeremie on the back as he sipped at his warm drink. "Maybe this is a good thing!"

Odd: ever optimistic.

"What the hell is your reasoning for that logic?" Jeremie mumbled into his cup.

Odd shrugged. "Now you have a Ms. Einstein to daydream about—and this one is real!"

Jeremie threw down the remained of his hot chocolate in a struggle to smack Odd over the head, effectively soaking Ulrich's shoes.

"Watch it!" He yelped, doing his best with a napkin soak up the liquid from his now warm and damp socks.

While the three of them were momentarily squabbling, Ulrich had broken free of the argument to notice something unpleasant across the courtyard. It was Sissi, and she was bothering someone else for once.

It was their new interest, Mary Anne.

The unknowing girl was sat alone on a bench, her right leg tucked behind her left, reading a book that didn't seem to be in French. Her handbag was never far from her side, and right now, it was the only thing between her and Sissi.

"This can't be good," mumbled Ulrich. Jeremie and Odd had even stopped their argument to observe what was going on. All they had to do was give each other _the look_ , and the three of them were off together to go save Mary Anne from Sissi and her pair of apes.

"And like I was saying that's a really nice bag—where did you get it from? I have one just like it in pink—pink is so feminine and girly, don't you agree? I like to go shopping in town—I go every other weekend with my mom—, but nothing compares to the shopping in Paris. My daddy took me there for my birthday last year and he got me this really cute…"

Sissi was doing it again.

She was giving an oral dissertation, and her three remaining brain cells were forgetting to make her breathe in between words.

Mary Anne looked like she was considering executing herself, until she saw who was approaching her. And then that cold and unnerving look came back—the one that Jeremie was stumped on.

"Ladies," greeted Ulrich.

Sissi spun around so quickly, she lost her balance and had to be caught by Herb and Nicholas, to which she yelled at for messing up her hair.

"Oh!" She squealed, latching onto Ulrich's arm. "Ulrich, darling! I'm so glad you're here, because I really wanted to introduce you to my new friend Mary Anne, and—"

"Wow it's sooo great to see you too Sissi," said Odd sarcastically, evoking a snicker from Jeremie.

She shot him a warning glance. "And it's not so great to see you, weirdo. So anyway, like I was saying, this is my new friend Mary Anne and she had such great taste in fashion—so great that her and I are going to go shopping in—"

"We're not friends," Mary Anne spoke, for the first time. She got up, closing her mystery language book and depositing it in her black _Hermès_ bag. Now that she was speaking much more closely to everyone, a hint of something that wasn't French was in her voice, as if French was not her first language.

Sissi was so taken aback by the very blatant denial, that she had let go of Ulrich's arm.

One of her remaining three brain cells had just cremated itself.

Jeremie and Odd were cackling now, slapping their knees and wiping away tears. Even Ulrich laughed, placing a hand on his stomach.

Sissi growled, clenching her fists. "What are you morons laughing at, huh?!" She seethed at them, almost ready to smack Odd over the head. Everyone was smacking him today.

By the time anyone had noticed, Mary Anne was making moves to leave. She was petite, even when standing on a pair of _Gucci_ heeled boots, of which she leaned more on the left one than the right, and if one looked closely, the right boot was a size larger than the left. She put one hand in the pocket of her pants and moved her long white-blonde hair to one side of her beige top. Before walking away, she turned to the boys.

Mary Anne was looking at them—at each of their faces. No…she wasn't looking _at_ them…it was like…she was looking _into_ them.

Her inflection when she spoke was this bored drawl, and her eyes…they had that cold and unnerving glare about them again.

"You spend a lot of time on the computer. I can tell because you don't stand straight. I would be careful if I were you, it would be a **terr** ible thing if your **spine** were to become crooked," she said to Jeremie. Addressing Odd and Ulrich, Mary Anne told them to **beware** of their friend's health. "It would be a shame if he suffered physical damage as a consequence of his online ventures…. Gooday."

Mary Anne walked away, leaning slightly to her left, her _Hermès_ bag clutched to her side. The Kadic students watched questionably as she went away.

Sissi turned her nose up and stalked off to find someone else to bother, and her two goons trailed after her every footstep.

"What do you think that was about?" Ask Odd, breaking the weird silence. Ulrich shrugged, just happy that Sissi was gone and his arm could now regain its blood circulation.

Something had clicked in Jeremie's head.

 _Spine._

 _Beware._

 _Terrors._

The cold and unnerving eyes.

The monotone, bored drawl.

Consistently leaning to the left.

"Guys…I don't think our knight in armor is a knight at all," he said, the gears turning. "Ulrich, call Yumi. We have something to discuss—together."


	4. Seven Billion People

"That was careless of you, Mary Anne," Zed spat angrily as he paced; he never got angry—especially not at Mary Anne. "What _were_ you thinking? You completely blew our cover! The entire _operation_ is now at jeopardy."

Mary Anne sat unmoved, focused entirely on the computer screen in front of her.

"Dammit Mary Anne, are you even listening to me?!"

She glanced at him.

"No."

This was very much like his little sister—she never really cared if someone had something to say to her. The only thing she cared about was the operation…and her hair.

After a long day of pretending to like people at high school and suffering through girls fawning over him, Zed had drag himself all the way over to the junior high school to check in on Mary Anne, who had insisted that he visit with her in person and not via online communications.

His sister was freshly showered—better to go at night, since everyone else showered in the morning—and wrapped in a fluffy pink bathrobe. Water from her damp hair dripped onto her work space.

Must be nice to be comfortable.

This goddamn sweater was suffocating him.

"What am I supposed to do with you, Mary Anne?" He sighed, running a hand through his dark curls. Mary Anne was, however, much more concerned with the glowing monitor in front of her. Zed slumped down on her bed, moving aside her black handbag and its never-ending fallout of contents.

Mary Anne shrugged.

"You could thank me," she offered in suggestion.

Zed scoffed.

"Thank you for _what_?! For adding one more thing to worry about to my List of Things to Worry About? You realize that while I sort through the remains of mother's and Clovis' estate, move us from Geneva to this _shithole_ , and very literally _watch our backs at all times_ from not only XANA and _them_ , but now these little shits—having you threaten to expose us at a time like this isn't exactly keeping my hair from turning grey," Zed stressed, nearly having an aneurysm just thinking about it all.

Mary Anne rolled her eyes at her brother.

"You know, we wouldn't have had to leave Geneva in the first place if it wasn't for your constant _bitching_ , and subsequently, your wretched drinking which lead you to spill about—"

"Alright!" Zed cut her off, trying to forget about the time he had gotten drunk and flirted with the bartender at a club. Turns out this bartender and his strikingly whitened teeth were working for _them_. Thirty minutes later, Mary Anne had a sniper bullet put through the guy's head, stuffed two counterfeit French passports into their pockets, and got them on a plane to Paris, of all places. "No need to remind me…. Mess up once in seven years and you hold it over my head forever."

"Then don't talk to me about blowing our cover when you very literally blew our cover to the actual people who started all of this. Now, get over here. I have a surprise for you."

Zed reluctantly got up off the bed and walked over, pulling up a chair for himself in the process.

Among many windows open on the computer monitor, one of them displayed a live video feed. It was from a Kadic dorm, very similar to Mary Anne's, and the bugs were chirping—all five of them.

Zed's eyes widened, and he smiled.

Finally, some good news.

"When did you get this up?" He examined the lay out of the room, committing it entirely to memory in a few seconds. "Judging by the shape and layout, in comparison to the dormitory blueprints, this is a single dorm room located on the second floor—it's slightly bigger than the rest, so it must be on the corner of a building."

Mary Anne laid back triumphantly in her chair. "I'm sorry, what was that about me blowing our cover?" She mockingly cupped her ear with a hand, waiting for Zed to compliment her. Zed gave her a shove.

"Who did you plant the DustBite on?"

The DustBite was a device of Zed's own design and make. A microscopic, fully functioning camera and microphone set, designed to look like nothing more than a spec of dust on someone's clothing.

"Belpois," she confirmed. "After his display of chronic slack jaw in physics today, I made sure to cause a scene in the courtyard. Something that him and his little friends would have something to say about…in three…two…one…."

From the monitor, Mary Anne turned up the volume on the device, and the conversation began.

They were bickering amongst themselves in Jeremie's room.

"I'm sorry, but don't you think it's a little suspicious that this knight shows up on Lyoko, and the very next day, Mary Anne starts school at Kadic?" Argued Jeremie.

Yumi didn't seem to think it was all that weird.

"I don't know guys, people transfer into Kadic all the time."

Ulrich crossed his arms incredulously.

"Yeah, well I wouldn't have a problem with a suspicious transfer either if I was attracted to their older brother too."

Yumi shot him a glance as if she wanted to hang him upside down by his toes.

"Think about it," Reminded Jeremie. "Ulrich even said this in the beginning. How many people transfer into a new school half way through the spring term?"

Even Aelita, who had never been to school before in her known life, thought that this sounded suspicious.

The group bickered on about if Mary Anne and her older brother Zed were suspicious or not, until Jeremie dropped the bomb on them about how he believed that Mary Anne was the knight that they had encountered on Lyoko.

"And there it is," smiled Mary Anne.

Zed threw his hands up in exasperation.

"Just be patient," snapped Mary Anne. "You'll miss it."

The volume had been turned up even louder.

"How can you be so sure, Jeremie?" Yumi was rather on the defensive about this revelation.

Odd and Ulrich stood firmly behind Einstein.

"He's right, Yumi. Coincidences like this don't just occur randomly," Odd nodded, cuddling Kiwi. The grey dog grumbled in Odd's lap.

Everyone scrunched their noses and blinked in confusion. If even Odd had something reasonable to say about the accusation against Mary Anne and her brother, then there must be logic behind Jeremie's thought process.

"Explain. We're listening," nodded Yumi.

"Alright," he breathed. "It started with the code that showed up in the binary translation of data from Lyoko. The code was 6EQUJ5 6 7. I did an internet search on the sequence of characters, just to see if I could come up with anything. This same sequence is the exact sequence of characters that was found in a narrowband radio signal search for extraterrestrial life at an American university in the 1970's. This signal would have suggested the presence of extraterrestrial life in—"

"Wait…are Mary Anne and Zed aliens?!" Exclaimed Odd.

Kiwi growled.

"Not exactly, Odd. I don't believe it has a correlation with the narrowband radio signal received by the American university, other than that it's the same sequence of characters. I believe that whoever wrote the program for Lyoko purposely wrote this sequence into it, in order to warn when someone was entering and exiting Lyoko. After all, we are like aliens…entering that plane of existence."

"But are we certain that it was Mary Anne entering Lyoko and not one of us?" Asked Ulrich.

Jeremie swiveled around in his chair and pulled up a window on his computer. Everyone gathered around.

It was another very long sequence of random numbers, letters and oddly shaped characters.

"In the past few days, I've been able to track down the IP address used by the knight when dematerializing from Lyoko—basically I found where they went back to in the real world. And as it turns out, the real-world location—when put through a global coordinate system—is roughly somewhere along Rue de la Marne, right here in Sceaux."

A map appeared on the screen, depicting Rue de la Marne, just like Jeremie had said.

"The only notable structure on the entire length of Rue de la Marne?" Jeremie asked out loud.

"Lycée Lakanal," answered Yumi, biting her bottom lip.

The high school that was just across the green from Kadic Academy.

The same high school that Zed stated he would be attending the first day they all met him.

"If the IP address goes to the high school, then what makes you so sure that the knight is Mary Anne, and not Zed?" Ulrich was still banking on the hope that he would have a more logical reason to dislike Zed.

"Her speech pattern in the courtyard today," answered Jeremie. "And her leg."

"Her leg?" Asked Yumi.

Jeremie nodded in confirmation.

"The right one to be exact."

"What do you know that we don't, Einstein?" Odd turned Kiwi over belly-side-up and gave him a loving rub.

"Haven't you all noticed that she leans more to her left than her right when she stands? Well, the knight on Lyoko had their right leg covered by a drape. I'm willing to bet that Mary Anne must have had some kind of injury to her leg, and subsequently, Lyoko programmed her design around this injury."

"So what do we do?" Ulrich was trying to suppress a sanctimonious grin. He was right about Mary Anne and her pretty brother being evil.

Jeremie explained a plan that he and Aelita had been discussing for a few days. While the two of them continued to work on rebuilding the connection between this world and Lyoko, Yumi, Ulrich and Odd would try and get close to Mary Anne and her brother—figure out what they want and how they know about Lyoko, and especially how they've been getting on without the supercomputer.

"What's _our_ plan?" Asked Zed, rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers. He hated these children much more than he had anticipated to. It was giving him a migraine, so he rummaged through his sister's handbag for a pill bottle to provide himself with relief.

Mary Anne glared unamused at her brother, who had just asked the question as if she wasn't already two steps ahead. She was practically insulted.

"The _plan_ is to go hands-off from Lyoko for a few days. With us gone from meddling around in Carthage for a while, XANA will be at his full power. Let him take care of them. While they're busy with that, you and I are going to find the supercomputer."

"I was hoping you would say that," he mumbled, popping three of the mystery pills and washing them down with a glass of sparkling water from her desk. "Even if our absence from Carthage sets us back a bit, I'd rather be done with these brats. When we find that godforsaken supercomputer that Hopper built, I'm going to blow the fucking thing to smithereens once and for all, and then be done with it."

"You forget yourself, you absolute lower colon," reminded Mary Anne, holding out her hand for the pill bottle. Zed handed it to her, and she took her own regular dosage. "We can't just blow it up."

"And why not? It's worked pretty well for us in the past."

Mary Anne pursed her lips, drumming her fingers impatiently on her right leg.

Zed immediately got what she was hinting at.

"Don't worry," he assured. "It'll be remotely operated. All we need to do is plant the material and connect it to the supercomputer's external hard drive. From there, I'll be able to activate the explosive device by accessing it through a VPN via the supercomputer's mainframe. They'll never know what hit them."

"Fine, blow it up if you want. I don't really care who's there when it happens. Your proclivity for pyrotechnics doesn't really amaze me anymore," said Mary Anne dryly.

"And your complete disregard for human life in order to achieve your goals doesn't really amaze me anymore, either," he countered.

Mary Anne scoffed.

"I think by now, it's very clear that I don't care whose life it is. A handful of junior high school students from a French suburb—or be it you and I—we are all much smaller than the greater good."

Zed dramatically slow clapped.

"An inspiration to us all. What'd you steal _that_ line from?"

"Zed, there are seven billion people on this planet. I will not allow this nest of insects at this godforsaken excuse for a learning institution to jeopardize the lives of seven billion _fucking_ people. This is much bigger than all of us."

"God help us," Zed muttered, rolling his eyes in remembrance of that very realization.

"Piss on God," Mary Anne said nonchalantly. She had taken a packet of cigarettes and a silver lighter out of her handbag, and began to light one. "He's not listening anymore. You've known that for a long time now."

Zed sighed deeply, taking a cigarette offering from her.

"Yeah, yeah…. Cheers."

* * *

 **Cheers... a little background about Mary Anne and Zed. Where they came from and vaguely why they're at Kadic. I plan to get more in-depth about their past and their affiliation in the next two chapters.**


End file.
